MuMe Recollection of Memories Never Quite Lived and Ability

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I was wondering if a variation on Recollection of Memories Never Quite Lived could give someone a temporary Ability. I have combed the treads a bit, if this has been discussed before please direct me to the thread.

Obviously the caster would have to have the ability and it would be capped by the same. The thought came from what Languages Library books are written. Thus making a item that would allow someone to use the books without spending the time to get the language up to 4 .
I can see doing the language with a high enough base. But the rub would be enough Arts Liberales to have a open slot for read/write.

I am looking at building a powerful convent and wanted to populate it with a few useful items already there. Anybody want to kick the tires on the feasibility of the idea? Or would it undermine the point of diverse library and languages?

2

I'm not sure it is a good idea, but it seems to me that the effect would have to give a season worth of memories and then base the outcome on craft magic where finesse would substitute for teaching: so finesse+int-9=teaching+com for the sample time, SQ is teaching+com+3, if not arts then +6 for one on one instruction, so SQ would equal finesse+int. Of course for a season's worth of memories to be added it would need to be CrMe instead of MuMe (or else you are writing over a previous season), and there would need to be some magnitude increases to cover an entire season as well- a memory is probably a few minutes at most, to go from this to a season would be a multiplier of 525,600 minutes/year / 4 seasons/year=131,400 minutes per season, divide by roughly 5 for the size of the original gives 26280 times the original "size" of the memory, of adding 5 magnitudes (maybe 6) to the spell. Adding a memory is CrMe:5 as a base level, plus the target clearly has to be someone else, which means at least +1 magnitude for target, meaning an instantaneous version of the spell would already be level 35 or 7 magnitudes, making the duration of day would add 2 magnitudes for 9 or level 45, and you would still have the normal teaching limitations such that you could not teach above your own ability level, except that unless you are casting a ritual version of the spell (with vis) the effects of learning are temporary.

Alternately you could have a faerie instructor librarian who has an ability taken from a human which they could lend for use in studying...

3

I think that any Muto Mentem spell would just change the memory of the target, making him believe that he spoke (or speaks) or read the language, but wouldn't grant him the ability to speak it. Like when you think you are just about to remember something and you have it on the tip of the tongue, but aren't unable to say it, but worse. Maybe the target would start talking nonsense thinking that he speaks the language, or reads stuff and imagine a meaning that have nothing to do with the real one.

Creo Mentem seems more suitable to "build" something into the target mind to me, like an actual, useful (and real) knowledge would be. But it's quite dangerous, because if you let anyone make a CrMe spell to learn an ability you are opening the Pandora Box of a grimoire of spells granting all kinds of abilities, because if a spell gives you the language ability, nothing can stop another spell giving you any other one.

The only solution I can think is some object binding a spirit or being who is able to read the language and the target's language, and is forced through magic to read books and act as a translator, or whose mind can be targeted by InMe to read, well, what it's reading.

Or you could get a monk companion who is well-travelled and educated and can translate the book to Latin, of course.

4

This is resolved here:

So ask your troupe what kind of Breakthrough a magus needs to achieve for this, and whether it would benefit your saga afterwards.

Cheers

5

Thanks, yeah i know parts of this can be a huge can of worms. This is more a theory argument atm and feeling out limit i might be comfortable with... and i had not considered the ritual aspect. That could be a very deep rabbit hole. Your responses did help me get out of my own head for looking at this idea.

But the original thought had came from

The group finds a very nice lab text written in German. The member that wants to spend a season studying it doesn't know German. Instead a troop member "lends" him his knowledge of German for the season to learn and/or translate the text. The idea was to never permanently give a skill, merely allow enough skill to study something before the spell effect ends. So the only thing retained is the studied knowledge not the spell skill lent out.

Now that I am typing this, part of the idea may have came from reading up on Verditius house. Skimming some of the books instead of reading them, the info can get kind of blurry. They can give skills to a automaton in some fashion. I need to read though that section again... So the out may be having the house build a CP30 for translations. :smiley: And that can put the lid back on the can of worms.

6

A simple way to first read that lab text is then, to have the German speaker read it slowly and aloud, use ArM5 p.149 Thoughts Within Babble on the reader, and write what you understand of his understanding up in Latin.
If the German speaker has no Magic Theory, or no understanding of magic at all, that translated text will be weird, lacunary and likely misleading. Even a Latin lab text of another magus needs (ArM5 p. 102 Translating Laboratory Texts) working out its system of abbreviations by experimenting in the lab: the translation of this German lab text by Thoughts Within Babble will have huge mali to sort out these abbreviations, and perhaps added botch dice for any subsequent lab activities based on it. But you got a rough summary of its contents soon.

Cheers

7

LoH's section on Fortunata in the Mnemos box on page 68 has a work around of sorts that could be made into an item. (similar to previous response)

Could a variant of Exchange of the Two Minds (ReMe 55) that only exchanges Part of the targets' minds work?

8

You refer to HoH:MC p.129f Enchanting an Automaton. While this can have an automaton mimic some Craft and Profession Abilities, Martial Abilities and Brawl, it cannot bestow languages or other mental Abilities. See for this especially also TME p.99 There Is No Art that Covers Knowledge, and p.99f Magic Can Neither Read Nor Understand.

Cheers

9

Indeed.
This is my view of the situation - without considering what was the medieval paradigm and how knowledge/mind/spirit was considered at the time.

"Exchange of the Two Minds" looks very much like a possession. Maybe the labelling of the spell suggests that it could be possible to transfer part of one mind ? However, in effect, it is a full-fledge possession. It is thematic. Metempsychosis is a thing.
"Exchange of the Two Minds" gets complicated because of the soul aspect since Hermetic magic is not supposed to touch it so it looks like the soul remains in the original body where the mind travels to the other one. But if you are willing to discreetly hide that under the rug, Exchange of the Two Minds has its place in the grimoire of hermetic magic: it is not only the knowledge, but everything that is shipped to another body.

There is no spell touching "Knowledge" as mechanical skill set. My take on that is the following: because of the mechanic of hermetic magic, as soon as a "little bit" is allowed within a specific aspect of a form, then it becomes very hard from a rule point to forbid bigger things. More specifically, if it is possible to temporary transfer some knowledge, it becomes hard to prevent more powerful spells to steal knowledge, transfer large portion of it, aggregate it, speed up its absorption, etc. And then, it becomes the "weapon race": start your apprenticeship as Mentem specialist, because that's all you will ever need, since you will "spell-in" any other knowledge. And of course, it leads to the question: why was is not done before ? Considering Guorna morality and attempt at possession, how did she not do it before ? And if the answer is because she missed some key element that Bonisagus theory would later fill, why nobody else afterwards did not research it ? It is not like if all mages were parangon of virtue and morality...

Sure, it is possible to design limits like Warping, accelerated aging, but it becomes additional rules set in place to kind of control an exponential problem.
And it is easy to see that it is already lurking nearby: if it is possible to read mind, create fake memory, etc... why specific memory cannot be transferred, shared, implanted ? Short of a hard, arbitrary rule mechanic "So far it has been impossible to do it", there is no other explanation.

I agree that it could lead to plenty of cool things: automaton becoming preceptor for new generation of apprentice, developping quirks. Dark stories of powerful spell-theft by dreamwalkers, etc. However, the downside of it, as soon as it becomes part of the spell guideline, the logical consequence becomes "very annoying" - instead of becoming tools for interesting stories, it completely changes the paradigm and offset the delicate balance that magic theory is so far.
There is plenty of discussion in this forum about power, maximum level of Summae, Art level of experts, why is the Order not more powerful that it is know, etc... but I believe (and it is purely a gut feel) that spells affecting knowledge have the most potential to degenerate and completely break a system that is already quite fragile.

10

Vanilla hermetic magic can't do this, even though it's not something that runs against the Limits of Magic; so it would be a nice topic for a minor, or possibly major, breakthrough. See One Shot's detailed answer, in this sense, including the crucial if underemphasized remark about the need to first understand all the implications on your saga beyond the specific case at hand (the ability to learn stuff in "no time at all" can have a huge impact if magi start leveraging it for all it's worth).

Some fairies, however, can explicitly transfer an ability from one person to another - see RoP:F, p.62, the Minor Virtue Faerie Instructor. Since Faeries are fairly malleable to human creativity and often more than willing to squeeze themselves into human stories, gaining access to one should not be too hard - one such Faerie could itself search the PCs out and offer its services, in exchange for ... something, possibly to be run as grog/companion story. At the same time, the unpredictable nature of Faeries means that if the PCs do acquire the services of a Faerie Instructor, and you find out that this starts unbalancing your game, it's easy to remove the problem with a perfectly "realistic" in-game explanation.

11

OOOooo.. I like the fairy thought from Fafnir, gives great options for plot expansion.